Tag Archives: euphemisms

I saw many interesting signs on our recent trip to Japan. At times it appeared people used an English dictionary and juxtaposed any two random words. I’ll show you some of those signs soon.

One morning at the breakfast buffet in Okayama (all hotels have both Western and Japanese food to choose from), I came across the following dish:

You can see by the gravy marks on the side of the dish that some people found it irresistible. I eat just about everything, but I hurried past this offering. I like salt. I like squid. Guts? Not so much. Maybe I would have called it Salted Squid Innards. Not much better. Any suggestions?

Euphemisms are generally used to change something icky into something more palatable. As George Carlin said, “Sometime in my life—no one asked me about this—toilet paper became bathroom tissue. The dump became the landfill. And partly cloudy became partly sunny.”

I was in a medical center the other day, where an information station was set up under an umbrella. Emblazoned on the umbrella were the words SERVICE AMBASSADOR. I find nothing distasteful about the word INFORMATION, but I am entertained by the thought of a group meeting to find a supposedly better (and definitely more pompous) description of the services offered under that umbrella. SERVICE AMBASSADOR: Do you suppose the, ahem, ambassadors who staff that desk need congressional confirmation?

Keep it simple. Not everything needs to be prettied up. In most cases, your readers aren’t fooled.

… just about anything but dead, at least in America. As the great George Carlin observed, in this country we have such a terror of growing old and dying that we rely on euphemisms to assuage some of our fear.

If you read the obituary notices (and I always do, checking to make sure my name isn’t listed), you rarely encounter the words dead, died, or death. Instead, people pass, pass away, pass on, or expire (like a magazine subscription (Carlin again).

As an avid Monty Python fan, I admit I am able to recite the words to quite a few of their sketches. A classic is “The “Dead Parrot,” in which a man returns to the pet store from which he very recently bought a parrot and is claiming it was dead all along. The proprietor insists it’s just resting, but the patron (Michael Palin), unleashes a torrent of euphemisms for dead, trying to make his point that the parrot “is no more”: he is deceased, demised, has passed on, ceased to be, expired, gone to meet its maker, is late, bereft of life, rests in peace, is pushing up daisies, rung down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible. “It is an ex-parrot!

I have tried unsuccessfully to insert the video. This is only a still from it. Just go to YouTube and search for “Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch” and enjoy.

If you take a hardboiled egg, scoop out the yolk and mix it with mayonnaise, mustard, salt, pepper and perhaps something spicier than the mustard, and put it back into the white part of the egg, I call it a devilled egg. I grew up in New York and moved to California, but the same term followed me to the West.

I have learned, however, that in parts of the South and the Midwest, calling them devilled eggs does not make people happy. The assumed connection to the devil is frightening to some, I suppose, even when describing picnic food. In these regions, this recipe is called stuffed eggs, filled eggs and even angel eggs.

The name deviled eggs has nothing to do with Satan. It recognizes the spiciness of the eggs. That’s all.

I have one good thing to say about Donald Trump, despite the fact that he is a pompous, arrogant, narcissistic bloviator who, because of his inflated ego, thinks people take him seriously. I won’t even comment on the dead animal he wears on top of his head. Or perhaps I just did.

Apparently, he has or had a TV show on which he told people, “You’re fired!” I never watched it, but this I am told. I’m sure barking those words gave him great pleasure, but it allows me to say the only good thing I can think of in Donaldland: he used truthful, direct language rather than jargon.

The euphemisms in the corporate world today are “downsizing,” “rightsizing,” engaging in an “RIF,” (reduction in force) and other hideous permutations that are thought to soften the blow when an employee is fired.

They fool no one. I just wish someone were in a position to tell The Donald, “You’re fired!”

Death must sting very badly indeed because the word and its associates are so often avoided. People don’t die, they pass, pass on, pass away, expire (“like a magazine subscription,” in the words of the late—no, dead—George Carlin). Soldiers aren’t dead, they are fallen. People lose their spouses. They go to meet their maker, kick the bucket, join the choir invisible. If you want more euphemisms—words that try to make something bad sound more acceptable—go to YouTube and search for Monty Python’s hilarious “Dead Parrot” sketch.